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Did Anyone Else Miss the National Day of Patriotic Devotion?

January 25, 2017

Much to the disappointment of every woman who has ever loved me, from my mother to my first girlfriend in seventh grade to my long-suffering wife, I have never been one for anniversaries and that sort of thing. Not long after we met, the last of these ladies did her best to help me remember her birthday by explaining that it was the day after—or was it the day before?—St. Patrick’s Day, which is only helpful to those of us who recall when the patron of Ireland is commemorated by Mother Church. Nor am I one for big occasions. I quit high school in part because I could not stand the idea of the graduation ceremony and whether I in fact possess a college degree is a matter of some debate, hinging on old library fees, unjustly imposed, that I have sworn never to pay. When I was nine years old I played the new Pokémon game for 12 hours straight on New Year’s Eve and forgot about the new millennium, though around two in the morning I did remember to offer a prayer of thanksgiving to the Almighty for not allowing Y2K to wipe out all my Pikachus.

But even I can be forgiven for not wrapping myself in an American flag and reading aloud from the collected prose writings of James Madison last Friday. It wasn't until Monday morning that we learned that President Donald Trump had ex post facto declared his inauguration a "National Day of Patriotic Devotion." It is very hard, even for the sort of people who keep all their great aunts’ middle names straight, to celebrate a holiday that does not yet exist.

Mind you, I don’t think it very likely that I would have made much of a fuss about the president’s ad hoc fiesta even if he had bothered telling us about it in advance. Popular patriotism has always left me cold. I'm not registered to vote and I almost never do anything on the Fourth of July. Even as an adolescent in the immediate post-9/11 era I had very little stomach for the National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance; I even got sent home once, on Flag Day, for writing "Who the Hell is George W. Bush?" on my shirt.

I can't be the only one who thinks that the words of the official proclamation entered by Trump into the Federal Register read like something Kim Jong-Un’s courtiers might put over the loudspeakers on their Dear Leader’s birthday:

A new national pride stirs the American soul and inspires the American heart. We are one people, united by a common destiny and a shared purpose. … There are no greater people than the American citizenry, and as long as we believe in ourselves, and our country, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2017, as National Day of Patriotic Devotion, in order to strengthen our bonds to each other and to our country—and to renew the duties of Government to the people.

Something about all those capital letters makes me queasy. Besides, it’s not clear to me what, supposing some of us had time machines and could back and make a big to-do of it, a "Day of Patriotic Devotion" would involve. Listening to Trump’s speech? I was there.

It’s worth pointing out that these National Days are nothing new. Obama declared his own inauguration a "National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation," which sounds to me like a campaign by the Archdiocese of Washington to get more people to go to confession. In 1924, Calvin Coolidge announced "National Education Week," complete with "Patriotism Day." Jimmy Carter, daft as always, wanted something similar, albeit only after he left the White House, insisting just before he handed over the presidency to Reagan that the third week of February be observed as "National Patriotism Week."

In a bizarre way the whole thing makes me very pleased. I have always liked disappointing politicians and their noble expectations for my conduct. To make Obama feel put out one had only to join with one’s fellows in failing to bring about the glorious new era of peace and civility and liberal broadmindedness financed by Goldman Sachs and underwritten by state-sponsored abortion that he had proposed for us on the campaign trail. To annoy Trump, who has spent the last five days making it clear that he would rather pay his advisers to invent figures for him than believe that large numbers of people were not happy about his inauguration, you just have to stay home when he makes speeches.

In other words, I’m glad it’s still as easy as ever to be a bad citizen. Don't worry: I'm not dumping on ’Merica. I adore our beautiful landscape and Coors and jazz and the University of Michigan football team, especially its head coach, Jim Harbaugh, our greatest living citizen; my preferred brand of cigarette is even called ‘American Spirit’. I just want to love it on my own terms, which is, of course, the most American attitude of all.